My Twin's Husband Has Returned

“My lady, if you keep starving yourself like this, something truly terrible is going to happen.”

The old butler’s plaintive cries beyond the door were what finally dragged me out of sleep. I wanted to answer him, but I hadn’t the will even for that.

I’d lost count of the days, and I couldn’t even tell day from night anymore. I didn’t want to do anything. I only wanted to stay buried in the dark like this and sleep forever, so I shut my eyes again and tried to coax myself back under.

The old butler knocked at the door again, rap-rap-rap.

“They say the master is on his way to the ducal castle. It’s the first you’ll have seen of him in five years — you must greet him looking your loveliest, my lady.”

The words caught me off guard, and my eyes flew open.

The master? Cedric Drake?

Why would Cedric be coming here? Had that absurd lie finally been found out?

Yes — perhaps at Father’s command to set everything back the way it was, he’s been sent all this way to fetch me.

I dragged my blanket with me, hurried over, and flung the door open.

“If Cedric is coming to fetch me himself, then Father must finally have learned the truth, no? Never mind that — tell him I’ll go up to the capital myself, right now. I’ve no wish to spend hours shut inside a cramped carriage with that man.”
“No, my lady. It isn’t Count Drake, but Ern—”

Slam. I shut the door before the old butler could finish.

Of course. As if that bastard would ever come. I’ll simply be left all alone in this wretched, ruined ducal castle, forgotten by everyone.

Naturally, I hadn’t the slightest will to put anything in my mouth. For days I’d taken nothing but water and a few scraps of bread, starving myself nearly to death before forcing down the smallest bite, and even that I swallowed with water, hardly chewing.

Maybe that was why my head wouldn’t work properly. I felt like I was wandering endlessly through a fog I couldn’t see through.

Is this space I’m breathing in truly real? Could it be I’ve been trapped in some long dream I can’t wake from?

I refused to think about it too deeply.

The old butler kept knocking, begging me to at least take a meal, and I pulled the blanket up over my head.

“Anyway, why is it so cold in here.”

A cold draft seeped in through the gaps of a poorly kept window. I curled up small on the hard bed and shut my eyes; I had to fall asleep quickly, before the warmth gathered under the blanket could escape.

“…Ah.”

How much time had passed? The room had suddenly gone bright, and startled, I rubbed my eyes and pushed myself upright.

“My lady, forgive me for coming in without your leave. Hoillun was making such a fuss. I feared something dreadful might have happened, and I couldn’t help it.”

The elderly woman offered some excuse or other. I’d never seen her before, but by all appearances she was the head housekeeper of the ducal castle.

“Even so, Hoillun’s right — you must eat. Go on like this and you truly will die. Come now, just one spoonful.”

Hoillun, the butler, watched me from the door with pitying eyes.

“Tess, that’s enough. Hurry and feed her before the soup goes cold.”
“Ugh, that nagging of his. As if I don’t know well enough to see to it myself.”

It had been ages since I’d heard people speak to each other like this. But I only stared blankly at the spoon Tess held out, then crawled back down under the blanket.

“Later… I’ll eat later.”
“No, my lady.”

Tess, though, hauled me upright with a rough, insistent hand. Dragged up limp and listless, I stared at her in surprise, and she spoke to me with unshakable firmness.

“There is no later. Eat now. In a few hours the master will be here, I tell you. Finish your meal and make yourself presentable. Right now you look less like a loving wife than a beggar who’s come to grovel for scraps.”

Before I could get out a single word of protest, warm soup was already pushing into my mouth.

Who on earth is it that keeps coming, this whole time?

I swallowed the soup obediently, just as Tess told me to. I did it thinking that once I’d given these people everything they wanted, I’d be allowed to fall asleep again.

Hoillun had thrown himself entirely into the preparations to receive the master. He’d cleaned without rest for days, but the truth was there simply weren’t enough hands.

Only two servants remained in the ducal castle now: Hoillun and Tess. No one would stay on out of loyalty alone in a place that paid no wages.

The master will be arriving any moment now.

Hoillun hurried off to find Tess.

“Tess!”

A little while ago she’d gone to tidy the kitchen after seeing to the lady’s meal, and there hadn’t been a peep from her since. Hoillun shuffled through the ducal castle at his slow, plodding pace, calling her name over and over.

“Good grief, where has that woman gone off to now.”

Hoillun was passing before the dining hall, thumping at his creaking back, when it happened.

“Hoillun! Hoillun!”

Tess came scrambling down the corridor toward him in a frantic rush, calling out to him in desperation.

“Hoil— Hoillun. Good heavens. My lady. My lady—”
“What is it? What about my lady?”

Some instinct screamed danger, and Hoillun seized Tess by both shoulders.

“What’s happened, Tess. Out with it now, properly.”

Tess didn’t even catch her heaving breath before she shrieked loud enough to bring the whole ducal castle down.

“M— haah— my lady’s climbed the spire to throw herself off!”
“What? What in the world are you saying!”

Tess’s chest heaved from the run, but instead of wasting words, she grabbed Hoillun’s arm and hauled him along. When she’d dragged him out of the castle, there in the far distance was the lady, clinging to the very top of the spire.

“Oh, no.”

Hoillun clapped both hands over his mouth and couldn’t go on.

“My lady! My lady! That railing’s so old there’s no telling when it’ll give way! Come down now, please!”

Tess waved both arms above her head, but there wasn’t a chance her cries would carry all the way to the lady.

“What are we to do. For all that I resented her, I never wished to watch her die before my eyes. Haah — I can’t catch my breath. Haah, haah.”
“First, calm yourself, Tess. You have to keep your wits about you. You stand here and watch what’s happening. I’ll go up at once and try to talk the lady down.”

Hoillun set off at a run on his worn old knees.

It would take a good while to climb the spire. Watching Hoillun shrink into the distance, Tess stamped her feet in helpless agitation.

“Please, my lady. Just hold on a little longer.”

Tess kept her eyes fixed on the spire, hands pressed together in prayer.

And it was then that someone came striding in through the castle gate.

An officer’s uniform fit snug over a massive frame, and he carried himself with arrogance, as though he owned everything in sight.

“What an ardent welcome.”

Setting foot in his own castle, Duke Ernst looked up toward the top of the spire and let out a dumbfounded, mirthless laugh.

— Whoooosh.

The moment I reached the top of the high spire, a fierce wind swept past me.

“…Wind.”

Facing the wind that clawed at my cheeks, I gazed quietly down from the spire. As I took in the dizzying drop below, my head spun for a moment.

Ah.

Why had I climbed all the way up this high spire? Nowhere in my finely shattered memories was there any trace of how I’d come to be here.

Absurdly enough, it was only after I’d eaten a decent amount and slept properly that I’d finally had the strength to crawl up somewhere this high.

My chest had felt so tight, and now I feel almost alive again.

One step at a time, I moved closer until I stood at the railing. The biting wind left my ears numb and deaf, and with nothing to hear, nothing frightened me.

If I were to vanish from the world just like this, could I make even a little of my injustice known?

Never once in my life had I thought I wanted to die. And yet, if someone asked whether I’d ever desperately wanted to live, I couldn’t have answered that for certain either. I’d simply been born ‘Marienne,’ and so I’d lived as ‘Marienne,’ never once feeling the preciousness of a life I took for granted.

Perhaps this is how I’m being punished for it.

Not a single soul in this world would believe a word I said. I had never felt so lonely, so wretched.

— Whoooosh.

“Ah!”

In that instant a tremendous gust of wind struck. My body lurched, and on reflex I grabbed the railing and dug my toes in to keep from losing my balance.

“Aaah! My lady!”

A faint scream carried up to me on the wind. Far below, I could see Tess recoiling in terror.

Then the sheer, dizzying plunge came into full view. If my body had tipped over just then, I’d have died for certain.

“Ha… good heavens.”

The moment it sank in, an enormous terror surged through me all at once. My limbs froze and my thoughts stopped dead.

I very nearly came to real ruin just now.

I couldn’t die like this. Death had brushed so close I could still feel it, and all at once the whole of it struck me as a monstrous injustice.

Why should I be the one to suffer such humiliation?

I had given my utmost in every single moment. For my husband, for my sister, for everyone around me. And yet now there was nothing left in my hands at all.

“What on earth did I ever do that was so wrong…”

I wished someone would give me the answer. But no matter how I turned it over, none came.

Injustice. Rage. Betrayal. Despair.

The emotions knotted in my chest clawed wildly at my insides.

All I wanted was to give every bit of it back. They had to feel it too, this filthy, wretched feeling churning through me, every last one of them.

I won’t let things turn out the way you all want. I’ll see you brought to justice, every one of you. By my own hand — I swear it.

In that moment, someone shouted from behind me.

“My lady, please, calm yourself and come this way!”

The old butler had climbed to the top of the spire without my noticing, and now he was pleading with me in desperation. Looking at that ashen-white face, all at once it struck me.

Ah — there’s been some misunderstanding…

I hadn’t meant to make any kind of scene, yet without meaning to, I’d ended up staging what looked exactly like a suicide attempt.

Small beads of sweat had gathered on the old butler’s brow. How frantically he must have run all the way up here, dragging that aged body along.

“Wait.”

Swallowing my embarrassment, I tried to clear up his misunderstanding.

“No matter how anyone reproaches you, you mustn’t throw your life away so easily. In all my years I’ve found that most of what torments us turns out, once it’s passed, to have been nothing at all. Please, I beg you, change your mind, my lady!”

But Hoillun showed no sign of listening to a word I said.

“That railing has gone to rot — it’s truly dangerous. Come this way, quickly!”

He was clearly worked up too, so I decided that for now I’d do as he asked and come down. The misunderstanding could be sorted out afterward.

It was then.

“What sort of place is this to come crawling up to.”

A huge man came up the winding stairs and stood before me, a man with jet-black hair and ash-grey eyes.

“M-Master! When did you arrive? There was still time before—”

The old butler’s face filled with shock at the sight of him.

“You’ve grown a bit older in the meantime, Hoillun.”

His brief greeting done, the man looked straight at me.

Our eyes met, and my mouth clamped shut. The sheer force of intimidation was like nothing I’d ever felt, as though I were being crushed beneath an enormous boulder.

“Now.”

The man spoke to me in a voice pitched deep and low.

“That’s enough of that. Come here.”

The hand he held out to me was rough and weathered. For a while I stared blankly at that great, broad hand.

It took me some time to make sense of the man before my eyes. Unfamiliar, and yet unmistakably a face I knew.

And then, at last, it came to me.

Herman Ernst.

I couldn’t hold back my shock at a reality I couldn’t believe.

What in the world is going on here.

Herman Ernst, my twin’s husband, the man I’d believed dead, had returned, alive and brazen, and now stood before my very eyes.

He must be a ghost. Either that, or I’ve finally gone mad.

Step by faltering step, I shrank backward.

Or else — perhaps, without even knowing it, I’ve already died.

My back caught against the railing.

Hoillun heaved a deep breath and cried out, “Gods above!” In the same instant, a low voice sliced through the air and lodged itself in my ears.

“Stop. Please — go no further than that.”

Herman spoke.

“Come here, Marienne.”

It was my true name, one I hadn’t heard in a very, very long time.